Oracle Blog

For Customer Service, Social Isn’t the End Game – It’s a Way to Change the Game

Now,
more than ever, the importance of differentiation throughout the customer experience
is paramount. For Service, Marketing, Sales, and Commerce leaders Social adds
another new channel and a host of opportunities.

Social
also brings new strategies and tactics to be mastered and tuned to your
business—but avoid the SocialSilo.
Thinking about Social as a set of processes, people, and technologies separate
from your core businesswill be a limiting factor down the road. Silo'd thinking and execution will limit your ability to deliver a seamless experience and measure your overall, cross-channel business performance.

If you're in IT or working with IT to deliver business solutions Social Silos = more complexity, another thing to integrate, manage, and report on. Finally, because Social is moving and evolving so fast it makes sense that Cloud be the preferred deployment model.

Isn’t
Social Media a Marketing Thing?

Not
anymore. First, more and more people found their way onto social networks.
Then, accelerated by the explosion of mobile technology, they started spending
more and more time on them. It made sense for Marketing to get in the game
first. Early adopters in Social Service started experimenting and learning from
Marketing’s example soon after. Today, these factors are at a tipping point,
forcing Service organizations to get social in order to remain
competitive and meet ever-increasing customer expectations. The driving forces:

Scope – The pervasive
nature of Social networks has made some level of Social service mandatory.
You’ve got to be where the customers are.

Speed – The speed at
which information is being shared is via Social, including Social via
mobile, goes hand-in-hand with rising customer expectations.

Sharing – Social
networks are about sharing experiences—the good and the not-so-good—and
it’s more public and transparent than any other channel.

The
bottom line is that the customer expects one, consistent experience across
touch points. Structuring your customer’s journey for consistency is going to
take some level of inter-departmental understanding and collaboration if you
want to do it right.

Social
Service Isn’t About Solving a Customer’s Problem in 140 Characters

Incorporating
Social into your business doesn’t mean that you have to transform everyone in
your contact center into a team of social media all stars. If you’re a social
champion in your organization I would recommend you take that misconception off
the table as soon as possible. Break your entry into Social into consumable and
achievable chunks -- like identifying Social skill-sets that exist in your
teams today.

Also,
watch out for the hype around how social business is portrayed in the media.
Yes, there are and will continue to be breathless headlines about companies
moving towards or away
from Social for customer service. I read a LOT of articles about the business
value of social. The learning from the real-world scenarios, successes and
failures is great. Just keep in mind that the reality lies somewhere between
the two extremes.

The
best implementations of Social for customer service leverage the best
characteristics of social media (transparency, interests, speed, 1:few and 1:1
interaction…) but channel interactions towards your existing processes and
strengths. I’ll break down specific tactics—including potential grey-areas,
agreements, and rules of engagement in future posts.

Social
Service Philosophies – Be Proactive, Drive Service Improvement

I’ll
say it one more time because it’s important. The end game for Service remains
largely unchanged when you add Social. The types of metrics (e.g. deflection,
response rate, average response time…) remain, for the most part, the same too.
The biggest changes are found in the driving principles and opportunities that
Social brings to the Service conversation:

Principle #1) Be more
proactive. You already know that Service starts well before the contact
center. The competition around the customer experience makes this more
important. Social makes it more visible.

Principle #2) Drive
improvement back into the Service experience. The (largely) public and
transparent nature of Social actually makes this easier than it’s ever
been before.

Summary:

Avoid the Social
Silo
– It’s a new channel that needs to be incorporated into your overall
Service strategy

Social isn’t a
Marketing or a Service Thing – It’s a customer experience thing and
we’re all on the hook to deliver.

Social Will
Change the Game – The pace and transparency of Social will change
certain aspects of Service, but the right approach and right-sized
strategies can make this a win-win for both you and the customer.

Stay
tuned. Next I’ll be laying out specific strategies for incorporating Social
into your Service strategy including; what it takes, potential
objections, and ideas on how to build a business case.